Saki (Author of The Complete Saki) edit data Hector Hugh Munro, better known by the pen name Saki, was born in Akyab, Burma (now known as Sittwe, Myanmar), was a British writer, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirized Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His tales feature delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. "The Open Window" may be his most famous, with a closing line ("Romance at short notice was her speciality") that has entered the lexicon. In addition to his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was the custom of the time, and then collected into several volumes) he also wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Hector Hugh Munro, better known by the pen name Saki, was born in Akyab, Burma (now known as Sittwe, Myanmar), was a British writer, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirized Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker.

His tales feature delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. "The Open Window" may be his most famous, with a closing line ("Romance at short notice was her speciality") that has entered the lexicon. In addition to his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was the custom of the time, and then collected into several volumes) he also wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire, the only book published under his own name; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a Parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland), and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, an early alternate history. He was influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and Kipling, and himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward, and P. G. Wodehouse ...more Saki / H.H. Munro Book List - FictionDB Fantasy Apr-2015 This early work by H. H.

Munro was originally published in 1910 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Gabriel-Ernest' is a short story about a were-wolf named Gabriel and his terrible deed. Hector Hugh Munro was bor... General Fiction Jun-2014 At a country house party Cornelius Appin announces that he has discovered a method by which animals can be taught to speak. His latest pupil is none other than Tobermory, the ginger cat belonging to his hosts, Sir Wilfred and Lady Blemley. As the gue... General Fiction Apr-2014 This collection of short stories and plays by H. H. Munro, known by his pen name 'Saki', was originally published in 1924. Its contents include: A Biography by his Sister, The Square Egg, Birds on the Western Front, The Gala Programme, The Achievemen... General Fiction Jan-2014 The Elk and The Story-Teller are short stories by Saki.

Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 - 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabr... General Fiction Jan-2014 "Ministers of Grace" is a short story by Saki. Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 - 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories... General Fiction Jan-2014 The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope is a short story by Saki. Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 - 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes mac... General Fiction Jan-2014 The Story of St. Vespaluus is a short story by Saki.

Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 - 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre s... General Fiction Oct-2013 Tobermory is a short story by Saki. Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 - 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirised ... General Fiction Jun-2013 An NYRB Classics Original The whimsical, macabre tales of British writer H. H. Munro--better known as Saki--skewer the banality and hypocrisy of polite English society between the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of World War I. Saki's hero... H.H. Munro (SAKI) H.H. Munro (SAKI) Create Account H.H.

Munro (SAKI) Hector Hugh Munro (Dec 18, 1870 - Nov 14, 1916) was a witty British author who published under the pen name SAKI or H.H. Munro. The inspiration for the pen name "Saki" is unknown, it may be based upon a character in a poem or on a South American monkey . Given Munro's intellect, wit, and mischevious nature it's possible it was based on both simultaneously. As a writer, Munro (Saki) was a master of the short story form and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker . Munro was born in Akyab, Burma (now known as Myanmar) in 1870. In 1872 while she was on a trip to England, his mother Mary was charged by a cow. She suffered a miscarriage, never recovered, and died in 1872 when Munro was only two years old. After her death, the Munro children were sent from Burma back to England where they lived with their grandmother and aunts in a strict puritanical household.

In his early career, Munro became a police officer in India and was posted to Burma where he contracted malaria before returning to England in 1895. When the war broke out, Munro refused a commission joined the British armed forces as a regular trooper where he was certain to see battle. He was killed in action by a German sniper. His last words were reported as, "Put that bloody cigarette out!" In one of those unfortunate twists of fate, the papers that Munro had left behind were destroyed by his sister Ethel, who wrote her own account of their childhood. Murno never married and may have been gay, but homosexuality was a crime in Britain during Munro's lifetime and the decorum of the times would have required him to keep that part of his life secreted away. Munro had a penchant for mocking the popular customs and manners of Edwardian England. He often did so by depicting characters in a setting and manner that would contrast their behavior with that of the natural world; often demonstrating that the simple and straightforward rules of nature would always trump the vanities of men. This is demonstrated gently in The Toys of Peace where parents from Edwardian England are taught a lesson that is still familiar to modern parents.

And it is demonstrated with striking clarity in the highly recommended story The Interlopers . The Open Window is a fine example of his more humorous work is a highly recommended read. Munro passed away November 13, 1916 in France. Readers that would like to explore the short stories of H.H. Munro (Saki) should consider starting with the following works: Saki Biography - eNotes.com Saki Biography link Link Saki was born Hector Hugh Munro on December 18, 1870, in Akyab, Burma, the third child of Major Charles Augustus Munro and his wife, Mary (née Mercer) Frances. Saki’s mother would die in pregnancy two years later. Brought to Great Britain by their father, Hector and his siblings were reared by two rather repressive aunts until Major Munro resigned his commission and took his children on extended tours through Europe to further their education; this period marked the end of Hector’s time at one of Great Britain’s upper-class public schools.

During this time, the Munros liked to stay in Davos, Switzerland; it was there that the boy made the acquaintance of the writer John Addington Symonds, a man whose homosexual orientation the adult Munro would share. At twenty-three, Munro served for a short time as a military police officer in Burma before malaria brought him back to Great Britain, where he set up bachelor’s quarters in London. Munro published his first book, The Rise of the Russian Empire, in 1900, yet readers delighted much more in his political satires, which featured an Alice in Wonderland who encountered modern political figures. Accompanied by the drawings of F. Carruthers Gould, The Westminster Alice (collected in 1902) made famous its creator, who took the pen name of Saki from the boyish cupbearer to the gods of Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859) and would continue to write all of his fiction under this pseudonym.

In 1902, Saki served as correspondent for the conservative London newspaper Morning Post and saw the Balkans, Russia, and France before he retired to London after the death of his father in 1908. As Saki, he steadily wrote his short stories for publication in British magazines and enjoyed such a success among his exclusive readership that his stories were collected in book form in 1910 and 1911. A year later, Saki’s novel The Unbearable Bassington (1912) appeared, and another novel followed, When William Came (1913). At the height of his fame for his short fiction and while he was working on a play, World War I broke out. Saki volunteered for military service. Refusing an officer’s commission or a “safe” position, Munro fought in France and was killed in action during the Beaumont-Hamel offensive on November 14, 1916. Two further collections of Saki’s criminous short stories and other works were posthumously published; one, The Square Egg (1924), contains work written in the trenches on the Western Front.

A revival of Saki’s work took place in the 1920’s, and stories such as “Sredni Vashtar” have been continuously in print. More Content: Biography (hide) link Link Born in colonial Burma (now Myanmar) to a family that had for generations helped to rule the British Empire, Hector Hugh Munro grew up in a Devonshire country house where, reared along with his brother and sister by two formidable aunts, he had the secluded and strictly supervised sort of childhood typical of the Victorian rural gentry. This upbringing decisively shaped—or perhaps warped, as some sources suggest—his character. After finishing public school at Bedford, Munro spent several years studying in Devonshire and traveling on the Continent with his father and sister. In 1983, he went to Burma to accept a police post obtained through his father’s influence. Much weakened by recurrent malaria, he returned to Devonshire to convalesce and write. In the first years of the twentieth century he turned to journalism, wrote political satires, and served as a foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe and Paris.

At this time he adopted the pseudonym “Saki,” which may refer to the cupbearer in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859) or may contract “Sakya Muni,” one of the epithets of the Buddha. After 1908, Saki lived and wrote in London. Despite being over-age and far from robust, he volunteered for active duty at the outbreak of World War I. Refusing to accept a commission, to which his social position entitled him, or a safe job in military intelligence, for which his education and experience equipped him, Munro fought as an enlisted man in the trenches of France. He died in action. link Link Hector Hugh Munro was born in Akyab, Burma (now in Myanmar), on December 18, 1870, the son of C. A. Munro, inspector general of the Burmese police, and Mary Frances Mercer Munro, daughter of Rear Admiral Samuel Mercer of the British navy. Hector’s mother died shortly after his birth, and he was sent to England with his brother Charles and sister Ethel to be reared by his father’s two sisters and his grandmother.

The children lived at Broadgate Villa, an eighteenth century house, in Pilton on the beautiful coast of North Devon, but they experienced an unhappy childhood. Hector, whose health was delicate, studied at home with his sister’s governess until the age of fourteen, when he followed his brother to Pencarwick, a boarding school in Exmouth. According to his sister’s memoir, he was much happier at school. In September, 1885, he transferred to the Bedford School in Bedfordshire, but his precarious health forced him to leave in December, 1886, which ended his formal education. Colonel Munro retired from active service in 1888 and took the children for a series of extended visits to the Continent. They returned to England in 1890 and settled at Heaton Court, also in North Devon, where Hector studied under his father’s tutelage. During the summer of 1893 he sailed for Burma to join his brother as a policeman in the imperial service. His health deteriorated, and after only thirteen months’ duty, he was sent home to recover from malaria.

In 1886, Munro moved to London to begin his career as a professional writer. Using the British Museum reading room, he researched a book on Russia, which eventually was published as The Rise of the Russian Empire (1900). It was favorably reviewed by the general press but not by the academic establishment, and Hector abandoned the writing of history. A chance meeting with a celebrated political cartoonist, Carruthers Gould, had a more favorable outcome. Writing under the pen name of Saki (SAH-kee), Munro published a series of satirical sketches in the Westminster Gazette attacking the government’s ineptitude in the Boer War. These journalistic pieces, illustrated by Gould, launched his career and were later published in book form as The Westminster Alice (1902). Before completing this early phase of his career, Munro wrote three additional series of satirical sketches for the Westminster Gazette. One was patterned after Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) stories, another, the Dolly Dialogues, depicted British society through the eyes of a frivolous and wealthy young woman, and the third, a series of Reginald stories, satirized contemporary British institutions and values.

In 1902, Munro began covering the Balkans as a foreign correspondent for the London Morning Post. During the following years he reported from Poland, Serbia, and Russia, where his knowledge of the country’s language and history were invaluable. While in St. Petersburg he witnessed “Bloody Sunday” and the Russian Revolution of 1905. He also became the Paris correspondent for the Morning Post before returning to England in 1908. During the final years of his career Munro worked as a freelance writer, largely of short stories that he contributed to the Morning Post, the Westminster Gazette, and the Bystander. Most of this fiction eventually appeared in book form. He also wrote two novels, The Unbearable Bassington (1912) and When William Came (1913). In 1924, he collaborated with Cyril Maude on a play, The Watched Pot (pr., pb. 1924). He also returned to journalism to report on Parliament for the Outlook.

Soon after the outbreak of World War I, Munro enlisted in the Second King Edward’s Horse but found cavalry life too strenuous and transferred to an infantry outfit, the Twenty-second Battalion Royal Fusiliers. In November, 1915, he went into combat in France, where he saw considerable action. In October, 1916, he was once again hospitalized for his malaria but rejoined his battalion in time for the Beaumont Hamel offensive. He was killed in action on November 14, 1916. link Link Saki is often depicted as a minor satirist of the Edwardian period, and his writing is usually described, disparagingly, as being in the same vein as Wodehouse’s: witty, airy, and tame. On closer inspection it is possible to detect in the darker nature of his prose a growing alienation from modern life that surfaced more fully in literature of the 1920’s. There is a bite, an edge, and a dislocation of reality in the best of his work that should place him among the forerunners of the generation of British writers who produced the modernist literary movements.

link Link Hector Hugh Munro, a Scottish-English short-story writer and journalist who used the pen-name Saki (SAH-kee), was born December 18, 1870, in Akyab, Burma, where his father was a colonel in the Bengal Staff Corps and Inspector General of the Police. Soon thereafter, his mother died and he was sent to England with his elder brother and sister to be raised by his grandmother and two aunts in Pilton, near Barnstaple, North Devon. He went to grammar school at Exmouth and Bedford and during his youth was interested in drawing and art. In 1888, Colonel Munro retired from the army and took his son on an extended tour of Europe, from which they returned in 1890.{$S[A]Munro, Hector Hugh;Saki} In 1893 Hector Hugh Munro returned to Burma to join the police force in a position gained through his father’s influence. However, the young man suffered so severely from malaria that he returned to England in 1894. Following his convalescence, Munro moved to London in 1896.

Determined to become a writer, he published his first book in 1900 (the only one under his real name), a serious history called The Rise of the Russian Empire. He then adopted his pen name, Saki, from the cupbearer in Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859), and began a very successful series of political satires for the Westminster Gazette, eleven of which were published in book form as The Westminster Alice in 1902. Fluent in French, German, and Russian, Saki traveled to the Balkans, Russia, Poland, and France as a foreign correspondent for the Morning Post from 1902 to 1908. Working as a freelance writer following his return to England in 1908, he continued to write short stories while publishing in the Bystander and the Daily Express. The Unbearable Bassington, his first novel, appeared in 1912 and was a scathingly accurate social satire written in a style reminiscent of Oscar Wilde.

His second novel, When William Came, was less well received critically and served primarily to warn complacent Britons of Germany’s aggressive intentions prior to World War I. During his ten most successful years as a writer, from 1904 to 1914, Saki published four volumes of short stories, many notable for their clever dialogue, odd animals and settings, and startling surprise endings. Saki’s short stories remained popular throughout the twentieth century, largely because of their sparkling wit and sharp humor; they are what have earned him a place in literature. Dealing frequently with unconventional subjects, practical jokes, or the supernatural, they seldom obey modern rules of realism. Romantic idealism spurred Saki toward his last great adventure in 1914: As soon as World War I broke out, though he was over the age limit, he enlisted in the army. He managed to join a newly created cavalry unit called the 2nd King Edward’s Horse but soon transferred to the 22nd Royal Fusiliers, serving with that combat unit for a year in France. At least twice he refused an officer’s commission and safer duty, preferring to remain a common soldier on the front lines.

In a predawn advance on German trenches near Beaumont Hamel on the morning of November 14, 1916, he was killed by a sniper’s bullet. The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki - AbeBooks The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki You Searched For: Results (1 - 30) of 333 1 ISBN 10: 0140183493 ISBN 13: 9780140183498 Used Paperback Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Penguin Books Ltd, 1989. Paperback. Book Condition: Used; Very Good. Dispatched, from the UK, within 48 hours of ordering. Though second-hand, the book is still in very good shape. Minimal signs of usage may include very minor creasing on the cover or on the spine. Bookseller Inventory # CHL1364625 H. H. Munro, H.H.

Munro Published by Penguin Classics (1989) ISBN 10: 0140183493 ISBN 13: 9780140183498 Used H. H. Munro, H.H. Munro Published by Penguin Classics (1989) ISBN 10: 0140183493 ISBN 13: 9780140183498 Used Munro, H. H.; Munro, H.H. Published by Penguin Classics ISBN 10: 0140183493 ISBN 13: 9780140183498 Used Paperback Munro, H. H.; Munro, H.H. Published by Penguin Classics ISBN 10: 0140183493 ISBN 13: 9780140183498 Used Paperback Munro, H. H., Munro, H.H.

Published by Penguin Classics ISBN 10: 0140183493 ISBN 13: 9780140183498 Used ISBN 10: 0140083553 ISBN 13: 9780140083552 Used ISBN 10: 0140083553 ISBN 13: 9780140083552 Used ISBN 10: 0140083553 ISBN 13: 9780140083552 Used Paperback Published by Penguin Books (1948) (1948) Used ISBN 10: 0140083553 ISBN 13: 9780140083552 Used Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Penguin Books Ltd 24/04/1986, 1986. Book Condition: Very Good.

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Bookseller Inventory # 9053-9780140083552 Published by LONDON: PENGUIN 1948 (1948) Used Paperback ISBN 10: 0140083553 ISBN 13: 9780140083552 Used Paperback ISBN 10: 0140083553 ISBN 13: 9780140083552 Used Paperback Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Penguin Books, London, 1986. Paperback. Book Condition: Good. First Thus. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. A novel. This paperback book is in good to very good condition throughout with no inscriptions, slight browning along the page edges, a small, neat library stamp on the inside cover.

Bookseller Inventory # 013493 ISBN 10: 1111111111 ISBN 13: 9781111111113 Used Hardcover Destination, Rates & Speeds Item Description: Collins, 1956. Hardcover. Book Condition: Good. There is light wear to the boards, with minor bumping to the extremes. The page edges have light tanning. The pages are secure to the binding. GRADED COMMENSURATE WITH AGE OF BOOK PLEASE BE AWARE THIS BOOK IS PRE 1965 AND THE GRADE WILL REFLECT ITS AGE Usual signs of a well read book but good overall condition. May not look good on your bookcase after reading and probably not suitable as a present unless hard to find elsewhere SECURE DAILY POSTING FROM UK. 30 DAY GUARANTEE. Bookseller Inventory # mon0001942874 The Unbearable Bassington eBook by Saki - 9781518387005 | Kobo Show more Show less Saki, the famous pen name used by British writer H.H.

Munro, was one of the most famous and influential short story writers ever. His satires and bizarre stories continue to be extremely popular today, 100 years after his death. Buy the eBook Reginald eBook by Saki - 9781518386275 | Kobo Show more Show less Saki, the famous pen name used by British writer H.H. Munro, was one of the most famous and influential short story writers ever. His satires and bizarre stories continue to be extremely popular today, 100 years after his death. Buy the eBook Saki | Uncyclopedia | Fandom powered by Wikia Early Life Munro was known for his skill in hunting natives and other wildlife. Hector Hugh Munro was born in Akyab, Burma , to a distinguished family with a history in the colonial service. His father was the Inspector General for the Burmese Police, and he spent two years frolicking in the Burmese rainforest before being sent back to England , due to the untimely demise of his mother. In England he was forced to live with his grandmother and his prudish, childless spinster aunts.

At a young age Saki learned that childless women are often crazy and unmarriageable, and hate other people’s children with a vengeance. It is just as well that Hector’s aunts forced him to say “please” and “thank you”, and bathe five times a day. He was also forced to write letters dictated by his aunt, which usually complained about exposed ankles in statues lining Hyde Park or other similarly indecent things. Naturally, their conservative attitude and world view did not agree with Munro, and he hated them with a passion, but was forced to stay under their guardianship for 10 years. Colonial Service After he graduated from grammar school, Munro was glad to leave his childhood behind by joining the Imperial Indian Police. He followed the footsteps of his father by getting posted in Burma, and served his empire by helping natives whose lives can only be improved if they were more British. He wrote lovingly about nature and wildlife during his free time, but also complained about the lack of taste and fashion sense in the Burmese natives .

He also got acquainted with the works of Persian philosopher and mathematician, Omar Khayyám , whose works dealt with the joys of alcohol, sex, and lax spirituality, and whose Rubáiyát was the source of inspiration for his pen name, Saki. Munro’s command of the English language was appreciated by his colleagues, and he was appointed as head of the Commission for Education of English to Elephants and Natives in 1896. His first project was to teach the Burmese elephants and natives to compose satirical rhyming poetic epigrams. It was a failure. He then made his second project easier - to just focus on non-rhyming epigrams that only need to be funny . It was also a failure. This led him to conclude that the natives were not of sufficient intelligence to achieve any sort of civility; in fact the funniest thing they could muster was “The rice paddy needs to be irrigated before the drought.” Those ties? They're so 1889. In London Munro returned to London in 1898, and began to work as a journalist for several prominent London newspapers.

Both his family background and his occupation allowed him to frequent the social circles of the Edwardian upper class and become a regular at their dinner parties. He would regale them with his witty epigrams, and turn around to satirise them in his editorial columns the next morning. Somehow, this made him rather popular, as most of the people he wrote about were under the impression that he was writing about somebody else. They invited him to lots of hunting parties, where they chase and shoot working class people on horseback. His Morning Post editors also agreed to give him a regular column, in which he would criticise the etiquette and fashion-obsessed Edwardians every Monday. Every Tuesday, he would have another column, called “ Haute or Naught ”, in which he would talk about recent fashion disasters of prominent Edwardian celebrities and make fun of people who don’t follow fashion trends. After all, as Saki said, “Being too tasteless or too poor, which may very well be the same thing, is no excuse for wearing a cravat that does not match your frock coat.” Besides his editorial columns, Saki also wrote short stories usually featuring witty and effete dandies as main characters.

His most well known dandies are Reginald and Clovis Sangrail, who delight in upsetting their traditional elders while making fun of people who don’t follow fashion trends. It resulted in many delightful stories and several anthologies, such as Reginald and The Chronicles of Clovis, respectively. Evidently, his characters would be overly effeminate for today’s more open minded readers, but back then they were completely acceptable in the eyes of the more conservative Edwardian public. This closet is obviously Second Empire, darling, and would look absolutely horrendous next to your Ming dynasty arbour! As a Foreign Correspondent From 1902, Saki was posted to Russia as a foreign correspondent for the Morning Post. Far from the comforts he had in the upper class areas of London, Saki was able to witness the suffering of Russian peasants especially during the various bloodbaths in the Russian Revolution of 1905 . Despite the fact that the peasants have no sense of fashion, Saki was sympathetic, and like any reasonable Englishman he would come to conclude that Jews and socialism were to blame. The socialists, he said, were responsible for the revolution, and the Jews? Well, they were just naturally suspicious.

His editorial columns would also adopt subtle political undertones, however Saki was always in the opinion that, “The Russians still don’t know how to talk politics. It is horribly improper to talk about death and destruction when you have perfectly good topics like tax rates and the latest agricultural legislation.” [1] Saki’s experiences in Russia also resulted in more short stories and as anthologies like Reginald in Russia, which dealt with Reginald who visits members of the Russian royalty to complain about their choice of furniture. The attention Reginald pays to interior décor , “which started out with an obvious intention of being Louis Quinze, but relapsed at frequent intervals into Wilhelm II”, would be considered a bit unusual, but the story was still rather popular among the English upper classes. Apparently everyone agrees that the Russians are completely hopeless at choosing chaise lounges, as evidenced by the aesthetic travesties committed by members of the Russian royalty which everyone apparently knows. Towards the Great War Health problems lead Saki to return to England in 1908. Embittered and changed by his experiences in Russia, Saki’s columns and short stories became increasingly politically charged.

He found the need to express his political and moral views on everything, including issues like socialism, race, women’s suffrage , the colonisation effort, the War , and George Bernard Shaw’s unsightly beard. More than one short story was dedicated to ridiculing Bernard Shaw’s fashion sense and ridiculously liberal ideas. He also reasoned that since childless women are crazy and unmarriageable, they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Obviously, if they were allowed, the women would force politicians to debate about silly things like shoes and cooking - a catastrophical future which Saki warned about in some of his short stories. He also famously said, “Letting a woman vote is like letting a monkey drive a car. Speaking of which, you know what’s also like letting a monkey drive a car? Letting a woman drive a car.” Saki’s opinion on Jews can be found in a well-loved short story called “The Unrest Cure”. In the story, Clovis Sangrail orchestrates a small-scale extermination of Jews while using incredibly witty and funny epigrams.

Saki also fiercely advocated declaring war with Germany , because as he saw it, those imperialist - socialists of the Hohenzollern dynasty, who were also possibly Jewish, were trying to force their elitist , left-wing ideals onto good old-fashioned Britain. What do you mean you belong to a soldier's union? Damn socialists! World War I To prevent Britain from falling into the thralls of the Jews and their socialism, Saki volunteered for the war despite being officially over-aged. He proved to be a brave and manly fighter, and managed to achieve the highest rank attainable for a non-commissioned officer. Despite being somewhat old, Saki still retained his good taste in fashion and interior design. His superiors also recognised this, and put him in charge of decorating the trenches with the most fashionable carpets and drapes, in order to boost the morale of the soldiers. When they couldn’t dig the trenches fast enough, though, interior design became just an odd doily on the floor. Many of his designs can still be seen today, buried among caved-in trenches along with a few hundred rotting corpses of soldiers who failed to escape when the trench collapsed.

Before his own death, Saki spent most of his free time writing letters to home, complaining about the lack of etiquette in the young soldiers under his command. He would get particularly upset when any of them spoke to him without being introduced, or when, for instance, some of the working-class ones couldn’t tell the difference between “je ne sais pas” and “je ne sais quoi”. One cold winter morning, while out patrolling and simultaneously bird-watching with a fellow soldier, Saki was gunned down by a German sniper after uttering his last words to his companion, which happen to be “Put that bloody cigarette out!” Most people felt that it fell a bit short of being an epigram, but it was as witty as it could be under the circumstances. Legacy For those without comedic tastes, the so-called experts at Wikipedia have an article very remotely related to Saki . The plagiarising idiots at Wikiquote also have a collection of quotations related to: Saki . Saki’s short stories are still enjoyed by the few people who have heard of him, and he has also left behind an array of quotes that one can use to impress people in dinner parties [2] .

His stories on the extermination of Jews, on the other hand, are now universally agreed by academics to be a satire of the prevalent views of anti-Semitism in his time. The same goes for his stories on the pitfalls of socialism, peace and women’s rights, which all happen to be satires on the conservative views of Edwardian times. The only people who think otherwise are people with no sense of humour. Many scholars also express regret that the great humourist did not choose to end his life with an epigram, which was usually the convention, for instance, Oscar Wilde ended his life with “These curtains are killing me, one of us has got to go,” which managed to achieve the purpose of being very witty and memorable while showcasing his good taste for interior design . Footnotes ↑ Saki was known for his brilliant and witty treatises on the effects of the regulation of the culture of legumes in Sri Lanka. ↑ Especially when you get tired of those Oscar Wilde ones. Featured Article

Question: What was the pen-name used by the British short-story writer H.H. Munro?
Answer: SAKI